Chapter 6
JANUARY - MIAMI, FLORIDA
Now playing: Dress - Taylor Swift
”Silas… Silas… Silas!”
The voice came with a shove, a physical jolt that tore me out of a sleep so heavy it felt like being drugged. After the adrenaline crash of Man Overboard, the debut, the pyro, the thirty-five minutes of chaos, the elimination, I had passed out the second my head hit the hotel pillow.
I groaned, a guttural sound of protest buried in the mattress. “Go to sleep,” I growled, rolling onto my stomach and dragging a pillow over my head to block out the world.
“Oh, come on, man. Do something fun with me for once.”
Cal’s voice stopped me. It wasn’t his normal.
It wasn’t the low, rasping tone of the man who had just stood back-to-back with me in a ring surrounded by twenty thousand screaming fans.
He sounded… young. Eager. There was a lightness to it that I had never heard before, a crack in the armor he wore so tightly.
I rolled back over, squinting against the darkness of the hotel room, and pulled the pillow off my face. I cut him a small glare, my eyes adjusting to the silhouette looming over my bed.
“This better be worth waking me up at,” I glanced at the glowing red numbers on the nightstand, “three in the goddamn morning.”
He nodded, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. He was wearing a hoodie and shorts, looking less like a main roster superstar and more like a college kid up to no good.
“Throw on some shorts,” he said, a smile breaking across his face, one I’d never seen before. It wasn’t a smirk. It was genuine.
“I went walking around the resort. Found the hotel pool. It’s outdoor, hidden behind the palm trees, and it’s heated.”
I shook my head, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Granted, Miami in January wasn’t exactly winter, but it damn sure wasn’t warm enough to strip down and jump into water at three in the morning.
“Are you insane?” I hissed, sitting up. “We’re going to fucking freeze. And besides, I don’t have trunks with me. It’s January.”
Cal scoffed, crossing his arms. “The pool is heated, Si. Like, really heated. There’s steam coming off it. I checked the thermostat on the deck. And fuck a suit. Just jump in in your underwear. Or shorts. Who cares?”
I rolled my eyes, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. “Yeah, I’m sure that’ll go over great. The two new UWF guys getting kicked out of a luxury beachfront resort for crashing their pool in the middle of the night. Great way to start our main roster tenure.”
Cal’s eyes narrowed playfully. “There’s nobody at the desk. The pool is at the very edge of the resort, blocked by hedges. And,” he lowered his voice, leaning in, “I did a perimeter check. There aren’t even security cameras pointing to it. The gate is unlocked.”
I raised an eyebrow, the rule follower in me flaring up. “That’s insanely unsafe.”
“Jesus, Si, get the fuck out of the bed, you boring ass,” Cal said, reaching out and ripping the duvet off my legs.
I pretended to be annoyed, huffing as I stood up, but the truth was, my heart was already racing. Not from annoyance, but from the energy radiating off him. He was buzzing, electric, and it was contagious.
Cal sat on the edge of his bed, tapping his phone against his knee as he waited. I watched him for a split second. Was that why he was walking around? Was he meeting someone? I glanced at his phone screen, dark now, but the image of that little blue Orbit flame flashed in my mind.
Stop it, I told myself.
I turned my back to him and rummaged through my suitcase for a pair of black compression shorts. God, this felt like such a bad idea. Why was I even agreeing to this?
I hooked my thumbs into the waistband of my sweatpants and shoved them down, kicking them off before stepping into the shorts.
Changing in front of other guys was nothing new; locker rooms were our office.
We spent half our lives naked or half naked around each other.
So why did my skin suddenly feel prickly?
Why did the air in the room feel charged?
I stood there in my boxer briefs for a second longer than necessary, hyperaware of the silence behind me. I knew Cal wasn’t paying attention. He was probably checking Instagram or Orbit. But the hair on the back of my neck stood up, a phantom sensation of eyes tracing the line of my spine.
I pulled the shorts up quickly, flushing at my own stupidity. I turned around with my head down, grabbing a hotel towel.
Cal hopped up the second I turned. He tossed his phone onto the unmade bed, leaving it behind, and grabbed a room key. His smile was still lingering, soft and dangerous.
“Let’s go.”
We moved through the hotel corridors like ghosts, avoiding the night staff, slipping out a side exit that smelled of salt air and humidity. The night was cool, but the humidity of Florida clung to us instantly.
The pool was exactly where he said it was, tucked away behind a wall of hedges and palm trees, invisible from the main hotel tower.
“You sure there’s no cameras?” I asked nervously, scanning the shadows. The only light came from the pool itself, a glowing, turquoise jewel in the dark. The steam was rising off the surface in thick, ghostly ribbons, twisting into the night air.
“I grew up in the ghetto of North Philly,” Cal said with a smirk, kicking off his slides. “I know how to spot a lens. We’re clear.”
I winced. “You make it sound like you were a cat burglar.”
He let out a small, breathless laugh as he pulled his hoodie over his head. “Don’t worry about it.”
He was shirtless now, the moonlight catching the hard planes of his chest, the ink on his ribs looking like shadows brought to life. I opened my mouth to say something, maybe to tell him to wait, but before I could speak, Cal’s hand was on my back.
Warm. Firm.
He shoved me.
I hit the water with a loud crash, the shock of the entry instantly replaced by the enveloping warmth of the water.
It was hot, bathwater hot. I sank to the bottom, the world turning into a muffled blur of blue light and bubbles, before pushing off the tiles.
I broke the surface, gasping, shaking the water from my hair.
Cal surfaced a second later right next to me, water streaming down his face, his lashes clumped together, his hair slicked back. We were much closer than I realized. The water was deep enough to tread, but shallow enough that if I stretched my toes, I could just barely brush the bottom.
“What if I couldn’t swim!” I scolded, wiping my eyes, though a laugh bubbled up in my throat.
Cal’s smile was infectious, his teeth white against the darkness.
“You told me you could, smart ass.” He reached out, splashing water at my chest.
And then, the splashing stopped. The laughter died down, settling into the heavy silence of the night. The only sound was the gentle lap of water against the tiles and our own breathing.
Cal was looking at me.
Really looking at me.
The underwater lights cast a glow upward, illuminating his face in stark relief.
His hazel eyes looked greener in this light, dilated and dark.
It was the same lingering look I’d caught before in the car, in the locker room, the one I always told myself was Cal sizing me up as an opponent. A coworker. A rival.
Except this time, with the steam curling around us and the water pressing our clothes against our skin, there was no denying it.
My breath hitched in my throat. The air between us felt suddenly thin, charged with a static that made my skin prickle under the water. He drifted closer, the water doing the work for him, until his knees bumped against mine beneath the surface. He didn’t pull back.
I don’t know where my head went, or where Silas Reed, the man of control, of discipline, disappeared to. The logic center of my brain simply shut down.
Without thinking, driven by an instinct I had spent months burying, I lunged forward.
I crashed my lips onto Cal’s.
He let out a faint, shocked huff against my mouth, a sharp intake of breath, but he didn’t pull away. For a split second, it was just the shock of contact. Wet lips. Stubble burn. The taste of chlorine and something distinctly Cal.
Then, the dam broke.
He didn’t just accept it; he claimed it.
He pulled me closer, his hands splashing the water to grip my waist, his fingers digging into my skin like he needed to anchor himself.
He deepened the kiss instantly, opening his mouth, his tongue sweeping against mine with a heat that rivaled the water around us.
It was urgent. Messy. Starved.
It was the kiss of two men who had been circling each other for months, pretending the gravity didn’t exist.
I groaned low in my throat, the sound swallowed by his mouth. My hands found their way to his shoulders, the wet skin slippery under my palms, before sliding up into his soaking wet hair. I tugged, tilting his head back, devouring him.
I pulled away first, gasping for air, my chest heaving against his. I stared at him, wide eyed, the reality of what I’d just done crashing down on me.
I just kissed Callum fucking Kincaid.
Cal’s face mirrored mine, pupils blown wide, lips swollen and red, water dripping from his chin. It was like we were both looking to one another for confirmation that the world hadn’t just ended.
A small smirk ghosted across Cal’s lips. Not his typical arrogance. Not the sharp, jagged grin he wore to get under my skin. This was soft. Dark. Possessive.
He gave a small nod, as if answering a question I hadn’t asked. His hands slid from my waist to the small of my back, and he guided me backward through the water until my shoulders hit the concrete wall of the pool.
“Finally,” he whispered, his voice a wrecked rasp.
He leaned in and kissed me again.
This time, I didn’t just let it happen. I met him. I didn’t fight it. I didn’t want to. Because fuck, this felt addicting. He felt addicting.